Internet Develops Prayer and Spirituality

Thirty eight internet communicators from across Europe are meeting in the East End of London this week to examine the use of the internet by Christians for building community, for education and for mission. This is the eleventh annual meeting of the European Christian Internet Conference.

Fr Peter Scally SJ

Fr Peter Scally is webmaster for two highly successful websites that promote prayer and spirituality: the multi-lingual Sacred Space, and Pray As You Go, a website that provides short daily spiritual reflections and readings, combined with music downloadable for portable MP3 players.

“The internet”, says Father Scally, “has some huge advantages for Christians over other ways of operating…as a means of prayer and spirituality, as a means of building community, as a means of educating people and as a tool for mission”.

“If we compare the accessibility of the internet to a monastic community, or even a church or a religious bookshop, we can easily see that people who are at their computer all day can access the web with a click, no need to travel to a shop church or to enter a monastery.”

“Using the internet gives us a huge potential reach”, he explains, both in distance and in user numbers. Potentially the reach is global. Sacred Space, one of the sites Fr Scally runs has had 19 million visits from all over the world - from the Amundsen-Scott observation station on the South Pole to the Pacific Islands, “just about every country in the world”.

Furthermore “rhe cost to users is low” – virtually free, and fairly low cost to the site owner too – “it is cheaper than broadcasting, printing or distributing books, magazines CDs or DVDs”.

Also related to the cost is that an internet operation can be run by a small team and reach thousands of people each day – “Sacred Space reaches 15,000 people each day, and in many cases reaches them deeply” says Fr Scally, with a staff of only two, “one of whom is 80 years old”.

Fr Scally goes on to explain that internet has other advantages over books and broadcasting, in the possibilities of using rich media, combining images, sound, video and interactivity, as well as the potential for personalisation of presentation and opt-in preferences.

Above all though, online spiritual exploration and prayer can benefit from what makes online pornography so popular: “privacy and confidentiality… people can visit anonymously” and they can explore what they want to explore without feeling the pressure to conform to a popular secular view of what is “cool”.

“People who may never go near a retreat house or monastery” says Fr Scally, “never set foot in a church, never knock at the door of a presbytery, never walk into a religious bookshop and buy a book, can dip their toe in the water at a site like Sacred Space with no obligation, and with no-one else knowing and see whether it is any good for them. And many find it is.”

The ECIC conference is running in the East End of London from June 14-18

Visit:
ECIC website